While back in the real world, Donald Trump has been
accused of raping a 13 year old girl.
I'm not saying we should condemn people because of accusations
against them but Donald Trump is not free from rape allegations.

Yes, in a non-technical sense there is evidence of something. In
the technical sense (see for example Bayesian Probability for the
technical meaning used in the hard sciences) there is still no
evidence that indicates the EMDrive works as advertised. If
there had been such evidence then scientists across the world
would flock to reproduce the results of the successful
experiment just like people rushed to reproduce the results of
Pons and Fleishman.

A more precise statement might be to say that even though all of
the experiments reported some unexplained thrust, there is no
agreement between the experiments and none of the experiments
have been able to show a clear signal or lack thereof above the
noise floor. Contrast this with the Pons and Fleishman
experiment which did show a clear signal way above the noise
floor (which ended up being non-reproducible) or the CERN
experiment which showed that neutrinos traveled faster than
light, again way way above their noise floor. Those CERN
experimenters had the honestly and humility to say they didn't
think their clear signal was real because the experiment was very
complicated and there was probably something in the experimental
setup they were not accounting for. The reason they said this is
because if their clear signal had been real then it would have
thrown a huge monkey wrench into established theoretical physics.
It turns out that they eventually found their mistake, in one
place in the experimental apparatus a longer cable was used
instead of the short one they assumed was used. This caused an
extra delay in their measurement of the light signal and thus
cause the erroneous results.

If any of the EMDrive experiments provided real, scientific
evidence of the EMDrive mechanism working then the scientific
world would be in an uproar like they were after Pons and
Fleishman. For the EMDrive experiments thus far we have the
worst of both worlds. On the theoretical side, the EMDrive would
upturn the world of theoretical physics much more than the faster
than light neutrinos; on the experimental side, all the
experimental results (except the refuted ones from China) are
consistent with there being no EMDrive effect at all. This is
what I meant. I didn't mean there was no evidence, I meant there
was no evidence that the EMDrive actually works as advertised.

By refuted I mean the early experiments in China that were not
done in a vacuum. Their thrust measurements were orders of
magnitude greater than the results in any of the experiments
that were done in vacuum.

As for citations, read the actual papers published by the experimenters.
If we discount the earlier paper from China which has been refuted,
none of the others demonstrate clearly that the EMDrive mechanism
produces a specific measurable, reproducible, amount of thrust. When
you look at all the experiment results combined, it actually looks
worse than any single experiment because while each of them
measured some unaccounted for thrust, the results are not
consistent across experiments which indicates that each one was
not accounting for a different source of noise.

If any one of the experiments had been a success then the next
step would have been to reproduce the same results in a different
lab, just like people rushed out to reproduces the results of
Pons and Fleischman. Instead, after each paper people try to
make a new and different experiment with more signal and less
noise that will conclusively show that the EMDrive mechanism
produces thrust. This Slashdot article is a perfect example.
If any of the previous experiments had been a success then the
next step would have been to repeat that experiment to confirm
the results. Instead, it is suggested they continue to
try to beat back the noise floor by greatly adding to the cost
and the inconvenience (to say it mildly) by conducting a brand
new experiment in outer space.

What makes you so certain it will fail spectacularly? It hasn't
so far...

ALL of the experiments that have not been totally refuted have
completely and utterly failed to demonstrate a consistent and a
repeatable signal that is higher than the noise threshold. Being
unable to track down all sources of noise is not the same thing
as getting a reliable signal that can be replicated in other
experiments. When we look at all of the experimental evidence
taken together it is completely consistent with zero signal
and only noise.

If you are measuring this as performance art, then sure, it has
been a rip-roaring success but if you are measuring it in terms
of science and engineering then all the experiments have totally
failed to demonstrate that the effect is real.

Just because all of the experiments thus far have either failed
or been refuted, with some experiments getting a signal in the
opposite direction of the one expected, and others getting as much
signal when vital parts of the apparatus are missing, and yet
other early experiments claiming a signal many orders of magnitude
greater than anything seen in the more controlled experiments,
doesn't mean the effect does not exist. It just means that no
matter how carefully they look, somehow, by some miracle, the
signal is always buried in the noise. When you reduce the noise
by a factor of 1,000, that darned signal also gets reduced by a
factor of 1,000.

There is absolutely no coherent theoretical explanation for why
this should work. That doesn't mean it can't work but the fact
that this "new force of nature" with numbers that were pulled out
of a hat just happens to always require an apparatus that creates
enough noise to mask the effect is highly suspicious. Basically
they need to pipe in and dissipate 1,000 Watts of microwaves in
order to create enough thrust to keep a single snowflake from
falling. Certainly it would be great if this worked but so far
there is no theoretical explanation and no experiment evidence to
indicate it does actually work. None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

The signal they are looking for is so darned small, it is almost
impossible to account for all the possible sources of noise.
Claiming that what is left over after all known sources of noise
have been eliminated must be the real signal is ridiculous. This
is why they see the signal in the wrong direction or see a signal
1,000 times greater in the earlier experiments when the noise
floor was 1,000 time greater.

The reaction to the EMDrive is very similar to the reaction to
the "face on Mars" which was also a signal that was down at the
noise threshold. Scientists who tried to explain this to the
public got castigated and got sent tons of hate mail and some may
have lost their jobs over it. When higher resolutions photos
were eventually taken, the doubting, cautious scientists were
right and the wisher and dreamers were wrong.

At the risk of sounding like a far-out social conservative
crossed with a radical feminist, do you have any evidence to
support your assertion that viewing porn satisfies a 'harmless
urge'?

I think you raise an interesting question, especially if we
focus on the outlet of the urges and not the urges themselves.

Just like in (my) software development, there is an ideal
solution and then there are the solutions we can complete
given time, money, and person-power constraints. Of course,
we may not be able to agree on any of these.

I look at the abortion issue this way too. In an ideal world
there would be little need for abortions except for medical
reasons. Unfortunately our world is very far from ideal,
especially around many of the situations where an abortion
seems like a good option for someone.

I think it is essential to look at porn in the same way. IMO in
an ideal world there would be very little need or demand for it
because almost everyone would be getting their urges met with other
consenting adults. But just like a high demand for abortions
indicates a world that is far from ideal, so does a high demand
for pornography. It is not useful to ask if viewing pornography
is harmless or not. The useful question to ask is if it is more
or less harmless than the alternatives.

Some people maintain that sexual repression in the West is tied
to its exploitive, capitalistic structure. I'm not saying they
are necessarily right but it is hard to deny that sexual
repression is deeply ingrained in our society. I also think
the high demand for porn is linked to this systemic sexual
repression.

YMMVG but IMO the ideal solution involves getting rid of the
sexual repression so people in general get laid more often.
I really thing this would have a huge impact and make the
world a much better place. For example, I wonder if the
mass shootings (or shootings in general) would be diminished
if the would-be shooters were getting laid more often.

Unfortunately, sexual repression is deeply ingrained in our
society so we are not going to get the (my) ideal solution
anytime soon. If it is true that pent up sexual frustration
causes some people to lash out violently against strangers then
of the many non-ideal solutions to wide-spread pent up sexual
urges, it could well be that making porn widely available is the
least harmful of the lot.

Except, what would you do with gas on Mars? It's handy here
because the other half of the reaction, oxygen, is abundant
everywhere. On Mars, you'd have to also haul massive tanks of
compressed oxygen around to react with your gas.

If only there were some way to make a solar cell to strip off
the carbon from C02 in order to free up some oxygen. Seriously
though, the missing ingredient here is hydrogen, not oxygen.
Perhaps water in the soil could provide both oxygen and
hydrogen.

Excellent! I have a bunch of leftover sugar. I will be
a good Samaritan and dispose of it in my neighbors' gas tanks.
What a pleasant surprise it will be for each of them when they
discover they have a full tank of gas.

DrJimbo writes: AntiX-Linux and its sister distro MX-Linux are both Debian-based and neither one uses systemd. The release of antiX-16 was justannounced. It comes in three different sizes: core, base, and full. Even the largest still fits on a CD. It has extensive LiveUSB features including easy customization of the legacy bootloader and the UEFI bootloader. On fast hardware it can boot to Bash in as little as 5 seconds and to an X-Windows desktop in less than 10. YMMVG. Details are available in the links above. A quick overview is provided in this promo video. Disclaimer: I'm one of the devs.

As has been obvious for over a decade, consumers overwhelmingly
want to be able to use recent technological breakthroughs so then
can listening music easily and conveniently. Most are willing to
pay for this and most probably want to support the artist.

The music labels have been fighting this tooth and nail pretty
ever since it was possible to download music via the internet.
This is slightly bizarre since part of the service they are
supposed to be providing to society is to streamline the
distribution of music (hence the RIAA curve, etc). Instead,
perhaps due to somewhat sociopathic CEOs, they try to cripple
distribution of music in order to create false scarcity which
harms society and harms the artists and only benefits the
labels.

The only reason a 3rd-party can make money from this is because
the labels are totally failing at the task of distributing music
in the best and easiest way possible. The answer is not to close
off 3rd parties who are doing the job the record labels are
supposed to be doing. The answer is for the record labels to do
their damned job and distribute music in a reasonable way given
current technologies. The tighter the labels grip, the more
revenue will slip through their fingers. There is no way
consumers are going back to buying a vinyl album and then a
cassette and then a cd of the same music.

The actual cost for distributing music has plummeted to near zero.
If the record labels are not going to take advantage of this and
distribute music in a reasonable way then good for Google and for
anyone else who steps up and removes the artificial scarcity and
artificial inefficiency create by the music labels.

While we're at it let's shorten the length of time copyright
stays in effect. That way these rock stars won't be lumping
their recent music together with music that was made back in
the 30s and 40s by people who have long been dead.

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks for clearing that up. I agree with you
that the summary is wrong to lump bank accounts in with
prepaid cards. On the other hand it was clear to me that
UnknowingFool was talking about an account associated with a prepaid
card. If UF had used "prepaid card" instead of just "card" then
they would have been even more clear. Your post was misleading
because it makes it seem like nothing has changed regarding seizing
money.

I think we all agree that they can now seize money from prepaid
cards and they weren't able to do this before. I thought that
was the point UnknowingFool was making and you seemed to be
refuting it.

The fine article also says the police are seizing money from
accounts.

If a trooper suspects a person may have money tied to some type
of crime, the highway patrol can scan and seize
money from prepaid cards....
Troopers insist this isn't just about seizing cash.

Saying that the police are using this to seize money
accurately reflects what is said in the fine article.
If you think the summary and the article are both wrong
on this point then please provide a link to evidence that
refutes it.

The Oracle lawyer has it completely backwards. If APIs could be protected
by copyright then FOSS could be easily locked out of making compatible
implementations. Oracle is not in this battle to get a few billion
dollars from Google. They are in this battle to kill off all independent
software development. As bad as software patents are, changing the
ground rules so APIs can be protected by copyright would be much
much worse.